I have some questions about the potential for entering management consulting with little knowledge of the field. I am defending my Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at the end of March and to be honest, I didn't really know management consulting could be a career path for me until a few weeks ago. My advisor recently recommended management consulting as a career and now I'm very interested. However, I'm wondering if this type of resume is competitive and if there is anything I should try to add to make myself more competitive. My main concern is that I have very little experience on the business side of things, and my network is heavily weighted in academia. Ph.D. from non-target school, M.S. and B.S. from a different non-target school. My thesis involves employing AI to quantitatively evaluate the quality of tissue engineered grafts (i.e., potential for success) before implantation. I also won 3 nationally recognized pre-doctoral fellowships. I reached an h-index of 5 coming from 17 publications, 8 being first-author papers. I mentored many students from undergrad to Ph.D. level. Some went to grad or med school, others got great jobs in industry. I participated in a part-time co-op while finishing my Ph.D. This involved working on research projects relating to AI computer vision, forensic genomics, and image generation. In this company, I also wrote SBIR bids and won contracts totaling $1.3M, as well as performed general data science duties such as dimensional reduction to visualize high dimensional data. I also generated an in-house tool to quantify the "realness" of synthetic data. I worked at a big-name government research campus for a year in 2018-19. I had a TA position instructing a total of 160 juniors. I have very little extra-curriculars, mostly just from working so much. I do have two experiences where I made meaningful contributions to roller hockey clubs I play in, which I'm listing as "Community Outreach". However, I'm not sure if this is unprofessional or unrelated to management consulting. Based on this, is there something I can emphasize or explain in my cover letters that might address qualms about my fit? I'm concerned that I started trying to get into this field too late.
I am finishing my Ph.D. in biomedical engineering. With minimal business experience but significant research and teaching achievements, how competitive is my resume for management consulting, and how can I improve it?
Transitioning into consulting can be a strategic move, even with a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering. Your background is highly valuable, particularly for firms with a focus on healthcare or life sciences.
Individuals from academia often excel in consulting due to their research experience, which translates well into consulting competencies. Your ability to solve complex problems, analyze data, and your technical expertise in AI for healthcare position you as an attractive candidate for consulting roles.
Addressing Your Concerns
- Business Experience:
- While you may feel lacking in direct business experience, your successful acquisition of SBIR grants and management of high-dimensional data demonstrate a solid understanding of business principles.
Strategies for Transitioning
- Brush Up on Business Fundamentals:
- Online Courses: Enroll in online courses focused on business fundamentals or financial modeling to build your business acumen and demonstrate your commitment to learning.
- Networking:
- Utilize Your Academic Network: Engage with professors and colleagues who have consulting experience.
- Industry Events and Online Communities: Participate in events and join online communities for life science consultants to expand your professional network.
Strengthening Your Application
- Cover Letter:
- Highlight your ability to tackle complex problems in biomedical engineering and translate those skills to business challenges.
- Quantify the impact of your research, such as cost savings or efficiency improvements, to make your achievements stand out.
- Resume:
- Include your roller hockey experiences under "Community Leadership" to showcase teamwork and leadership skills, which are highly valued in consulting.
Final Words
You are not late to the game. With a strong foundation in research, a Ph.D., and targeted efforts to enhance your business knowledge and networking, you can become a competitive candidate for consulting roles. Consulting firms seek sharp minds that can learn quickly, and your background already demonstrates that capability. Focus on polishing your resume and preparing for the consulting world with confidence.
Hi there,
diverse backgrounds are common in consulting. You will want to leverage your healthcare experience as a selling point so you should target consulting firms that have a notable presence in healthcare/pharma as the obvious choice. Try to network with partners, managers, consultants from these practice areas to get some feedback and potentially find a way to secure a referral even.
You will need to tailor your CV towards business related topics, however. Highlight any form of business context you might have encountered during your experience as a research associate. Because research and clinical work are areas that will not be applicable in consulting - they are a nice to have in terms of additional competency but they won't compensate for a lack of business understanding/acumen.
Try you luck in consulting an apply - depending on the outcome, you can still consider applying to industry jobs at a later point.
Best
P.S. It seems like you posted multiple “questions” to the board very recently which all pretty much revolve around the same issue. They are often very long with lots of unnecessary detail. As a practice for a consulting career, you should work on formulating your ask in a structured and concise way (e.g. situation → complication → question) so that you increase your chances of receiving specific feedback that is actually useful to you and addresses your core concerns - rather than a generic blurp.
I see you received great answers already.
Adding here a guide many of my candidates find useful. It lays out how you should prepare your application strategy:
Expert Guide: Build A Winning Application Strategy
Best,
Cristian
You have decent chances, but should consider having "more business” in your resume. Either by work experience or a bit of training. It always helps convincing them that not only you are serious about this, but that you actually understand the shift you are trying to do.
